2025 - the year of the Ozark Chinquapin

I first joined the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation in February of 2023.  A bag of chinquapins nuts arrived in the mail in March of that year.

There were six nuts in that bag - these were from the 103x cross.  Although four of the six nuts came up, three of them were killed when something raided my "not-so-good-after-all-cages." So from that first bag of six nuts, there was only one little survivor.  

(I learned a hard lesson on cages in that first year.)

That little tree didn't grow much in its first year, but in its second summer, it really took off!  By end of the summer, it was probably close to two feet tall.  So far this spring, it has already put on another eight to 10 inches of growth.

I paid my second year of membership dues to the foundation on January 1, 2024, and in late January, I got a second bag of chinquipin nuts - cross 10x¹.  (The bag said it contained five nuts, but there were actually only three in the bag.)

This time, I decided I was going to try starting the nuts in cardboard paper towel tubes...my thinking was the the tubes were deep enough that I would be able to plant the nuts (tube and all) without disturbing the taproot.  Two of the three nuts sprouted, and I planted both of them just west of the first tree.  But a mole tunneled right through the planting hole for one of them and that little tree didn't survive.  I don't know why the chicken wire I had wrapped around the nut didn't protected it, but it sure didn't. 

As with the first tree, the surviving little 10x¹ tree didn't grow much in its first summer.  I'm guessing it was only about three inches tall by the time it went dormant last fall.  But it, too, has grown quite a bit this spring, now standing about 10 inches tall.  It looks a bit yellow, and I think that's from all of the rain and cloudy weather we've had in the past couple of weeks (I hope it isn't drowning and dying).

I planned to renew my membership in January, 2025, hoping to get another bag of chinquapins so I could keep trying.  But to my surprise, I received another bag of five chinquapins in the mail on December 14, 2024.  I don't know why they sent them, because I hadn't yet paid my membership dues for 2025!  Maybe they just had some extras they wanted to give away?

Five nuts from cross 36xx, received on 12/14/2024

These nuts were from cross 36xx, which, if I read the chart correctly, is actually quite a bit more blight resistance than the Chinese chestnut.

I decided to try the paper towel tube planting technique again this year.  Of the five 36xx nuts, only one didn't germinate.  

• I planted one across the road behind the telephone building.  When I checked on it yesterday, something had tried digging it up, but the chicken wire around the paper towel roll held, and the tree and nut seem to be intact. 
  
  
• A second one went to my older sister, but something dug it up the first night it was planted out, so it didn't make it.  
  
  
• A third one went to my younger sister, and so far as I know, it is still alive.  
  
  
• The last one was planted near the 103x and 10x¹ trees in my yard and seems to be hanging on even though it looked pretty tiny starting out.

When January 1, 2025 rolled around, I paid my membership dues, wanting to be sure that I kept my end of the "membership bargain" since they had already kept theirs!

But imagine how surprised I was to open the mailbox in early February to find yet another bag of five chinquapin nuts!

These five were from cross CT-1.  That's not on the chart, so I don't really know the blight-resistance level of that cross.

Five nuts from cross CT-1, received on 2/6/2025.

• I planted one of those nuts in the cage where the mole tunneled through (it has come up and seems to be growing well).  

Little chinquapin tree from cross CT-1.

• I gave one to my older sister, and while it did come up, it may have gotten too hot so we're not sure if it will survive.  
  
  
• I gave another to my younger sister and although it took a while to come up, I think she said it finally did.  
  
  
• I planted another one across the road behind the phone building, and planted the last one at the edge of the woods behind the barn.  Neither of those have come up.

It finally dawned on me that I should make a map of where every nut was planted so if the trees survive to a maturity and make nuts of their own, I'd have a record of which tree came from which cross.  I've drawn that out on the back of an envelope for now, just to get it on paper before I forget. 

And to be fair to the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation, today I just donated another $30 to help with costs associated with the second bag of nuts they sent this year.  I checked the box for "don't send me any more nuts" for this donation.  I don't have any more cages right now!

Now...IF these trees survive, it will be interesting to see what kind of resistance they, and any nuts they produce, might have.   I'm especially interested in the four trees planted together in my yard, because they're from four different crosses:  103x, 10x¹, 36xx and CT-1.  

I don't know what the long term plan is for the trees that grow from the nuts they're sending to their members.  I don't know if the intent is for members to start planting nuts from their trees out in the "wild" or if they would frown on that.  That would be a good question to ask someday I suppose.

But for now, I have five little chinquapin trees that I will need to look after in the summer of 2025.  I have my own baby Ozark Chinquapin nursery, don't I!

Ozark Chinquapins in 2024

I re-upped my membership in the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation on January 1 this year and on January 27, I got a nice surprise in the mail!

Chinquapin seeds

Unfortunately, while the package says five seeds, there were only three in the bag, and I'm not sure two of those are any good.  One of the three had already started to sprout, but the other two had not.

But even if there is only one viable seed, I hope I can do a better job of protecting it this year, and if the one little tree from last year survived the winter, I hope I can have two here in my yard by the end of the summer.

So today (Monday, March 4) I've taken the two that hadn't started to sprout, and I've planted them in cardboard paper towel tubes.  If they do sprout, my thinking is that I can dig a hole with the post hole digger and just plant them in that hole in their cardboard tube, hopefully protecting the little taproot from being damaged.  I'll be sure to update this post with pictures if (when!) that happens.

UPDATE: Thursday, March 28 - On March 21, I was delighted to discover that a tiny sprout had emerged in one of the tubes!

By this afternoon, the little tree was about an inch and a half tall, with two nice little leaves and a third emerging in the center.

I've tried to mainly water from the bottom once the nut sprouted, thinking that would encourage the tap root to grow straight down toward the water.  So far, there's no sign of the tap root at the bottom of the cardboard tube (and that's a good thing!), but I don't think it will be much longer until it will break through the cardboard at the bottom.  

So tomorrow the little tree will be planted outside and protected with a sturdy cage to protect it from rabbits, deer and (right now, most importantly) the cattle!

The Ozarks Chinquapin Foundation 

(Other blog posts about the Ozarks Chinquapin)

Baby Chinquapins (updated 5/27)

Back at the end of March, I received a packet of Ozark Chinquapin nuts in the mail from the Ozark Chinquapin Foundation.  This post tells about the process of planting those little sprouted nuts.

On April 6, I made this note:

Something tore into both of my cages in the Barber field and ate the chinquapin nuts.  :(  I could still see the shoot on one of them, but without the nut, I don't know if it will survive.  No sign of any of the remaining four but at least it doesn't look like anything has been digging in those cages.

Then on April 10, this exciting note:

The "south" chinquapin in my yard has come up!  I drove a t-post in the ground beside it and put up a tall cage to protect it from deer browsing.

Baby Ozark Chinquapin on April 10, 2023.

And surprise of all surprises, a few days later when I walked down to the Barber field to check on the chinquapins there, I discovered that one of them had come up, even after having had its little nut stolen.  Later though, when I walked down to check on it again, it was gone, but the other one had since come up!

There's no sign of any of the other three.

.

Baby Ozark Chinquapin on May 6, 2023.

Before the little plant in the Barber field gets much bigger, it needs a cage to protect it from the deer.  I have bought some hardware cloth and plan to build a cage out of that.

Lessons learned for next time (and I hope there is a next time, since I have already paid my 2023 membership dues for OCF):  

• In areas like the Barber field where there is high potential for the nut to be stolen, be sure to put a very secure cage around the nut at the time it is planted.  The cage probably needs to be buried a few inches into the ground around the nut to try to deter anything from digging under.
  
  
• In areas where the ground is extremely rocky like the area behind the barn, try to break up the rocks in the planting hole so the nut's taproot has an easier path down deeper into the soil.
  
  
• If the nuts come pre-sprouted, handle them very, very carefully!  The taproot on the last nut was broken about an inch from the end.  I'm not sure if it was broken in the mail, or if I broke it when I was getting another nut out of the package. 

I still hope that the nuts behind the barn will sprout eventually, since I seem to remember that in a video of a tour of one of the test plots Steve Bost mentioned that the nuts there had sprouted over an extended period of time, not all in the same general timeframe.

As of now, I have had a 50% success rate in nuts coming up.  I hope that I can do better if I get another chance.

Update:  On or around Wednesday, May 17, I was shocked and delighted to discover that the second chinquapin planted in my yard had come up -- it was the one with the broken taproot!  It may not survive, but at least it's trying! 

The second baby Ozark Chinquapin planted in my yard has come up!

Update:  This afternoon (May 24) RAF, Mo and I walked down to the Barber woods to water the Ozark Chinquapin there.  It has died.  

Update: This morning (May 27) I carried some water to the little tree with the broken taproot.  It looks like something dug it up and ate the nut.  It is dead.

Chinquapin

I think I've heard the term "chinquapin" during my life, but it was probably in reference to the Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii). 

I didn't realize there are actual "chinquapin" trees - that thare are, in fact, two native chinquapins: the Ozark chinquapin (Castanea ozarkensis) and the Allegheny chinquapin (Castanea pumila).  They are in the same genus as the Chinese chestnut trees that grow at work, and the American Chestnut (Castanea dentata).

I know, I know...I spend way too much time on "The YouTube."  But I can say that I've learned a lot.  One of the channels I really enjoy is the "Backyard Ecology" channel.  Because I've gotten very interested in putting native plants in my yard and in the woods where I've been removing the invasive privet, I'm always especially interested in the plant profile videos they post.

And one of the recent videos was about the Allegheny chinquapin.  In the video, Anthony talks about how valuable the trees are to wildlife, and of course that made me think, "I want one!"

I wanted to see if Food Forest Nursery carries this tree, but didn't see where they do.  However, it was listed in the "catalog" of Pine Ridge Nursery, just down the road from me in London.  And interestingly enough, they also had a chinquapin called "Ozark chinquapin."  Being in the Ozark mountains, that name caught my interest so I had to ask The Google to tell me more about it.

Now sometimes when I go down a rabbit hole on something, you could call me "Alice" because I get started and I can struggle to find may way back out!   This was one of those instances where the more I learned, the deeper down the rabbit hole I went.

One of the first articles I read was from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, titled "Arkansas efforts to restore vanishing Ozark chinquapin trees take root and grow."

From that article, I learned that the Ozark chinquapin used to be a common tree in our part of the state, but was pretty much wiped out by the same blight that killed the American Chestnut trees in the eastern United States.

And I also learned that there's a group of volunteers who have been working to save the tree.  So I hopped on over to their website to find out what they are working on.  From the foundation's website:

The Ozark Chinquapin Foundation (OCF) is a volunteer driven, 501C3 non-profit organization dedicated to restoring the Ozark chinquapin to the woodlands and forests of the south-central United States as a mature, seed producing tree species. We are working to establish a viable seed base through research and manual cross-pollination of surviving trees to develop a 100% pure Ozark chinquapin that can reproduce and thrive in our forests.

Turns out they've been at this for a while now. and they've actually achieved some pretty astonishing results with their efforts.

At their 2020 conference, Leslie Bost, one of the foundation board members, gave a great presentation that explained what the trees are up against,  described the steps the foundation is taking to save the species, and showed some interesting and very encouraging data about their work.

I also learned that membership in the foundation is $30/year, and with the membership comes a chance to receive some of the Ozark chinquapin nuts (seeds) from trees showing some degree of resistance.

Sign me up!

Because I was so late learning about the foundation, and so late getting signed up, I really didn't expect to get any nuts this year, because they're sent out to members in order of sign-up, and if they run out, you move to the top of the list for the next year.

So I was shocked and delighted to open my mailbox the other day and find a small envelope bearing an "Ozark Chinquapin Foundation" return label!

Inside the envelope was a small ziploc bag containing some kind of moist substrate and several little nuts each with a thin little taproot!

I wasn't going to be able to plant them right away so I put them in the refrigerator as the instructions said.

I couldn't sleep that night.  I had chinquapin on the brain, and I planted them over and over and over in different places all night long.  And when I got up the next morning, I still didn't really know where I was going to put them.  

I knew where I wanted to put them - I wanted them near the area where the storm took out so many trees in 2019 - the area where I've been clearing privet. But the problem is the cattle.  Any tree that's planted down there had to be well protected or it would be eaten or trampled into the ground.

But eventually I came up with what I hoped was a good plan, and on Wednesday afternoon after I got off work, I loaded up my little garden cart and headed to the woods.

First thing I had to do was build some type of protective cage to go around the trees.  It needed to be tall to protect the trees from deer browsing, but also needed to have small openings to keep the rabbits and squirrels from getting inside.  Not really having anything that satisfied both criteria, I settled on getting the height by using some of the welded wire I had found down in the woods, and getting the protection from rabbits by lining the inside of the cage with chicken wire.

Next, I took my little garden trowel and tried to dig a small hole deep enough for the little tap root.  I was afraid of hitting rock, and sure enough, I did.  I ended up moving the hole a bit further away from where I wanted it, but I think (hope) I finally found a spot that would work.

I opened the bag of my precious little chinquapins and carefully pulled one out.

I fed the little tap root down into the hole and crumbled the dirt back on top of it.  "Live long and prosper," I whispered to the little nut.

I put a layer of old hay around the nut, being careful not to cover the nut itself.  I then put a ring of rocks around it, just to help mark where it was planted.  And with that done all that was left to do was drive the t-post and put up the cage. 

Again, it sounds easy, right?  Nope...with so many rocks under the surface, I was only able to drive the post in about six inches.  

The post was stable enough to hold the cage, but nowhere near stable enough to stand up to the cattle.  What to do?

I went ahead and fastened the cage to the post while I pondered on how to better protect it from the cattle.  I had intentionally planted the nut close to one of the big oak trees that blew over in the storm, because I know the cattle won't step over that big log or the limb coming off of it.  That left just two sides unprotected.

Funny thing about that dang privet...I've been finding several uses for it.  And so that's how I decided I would protect the cage.  I would pile privet limbs all around the exposed sides.

Now I'm pretty sure the cattle will stay away from that area because so far they've not shown any inclination to wade into any of the privet limbs I've piled up in various places.  Plus, there shouldn't really be anything in that mess that they "want" so they don't have a strong incentive to try to push their way through.

That's the theory I'm going with anyway.

So with one nut planted and protected, I rushed to try to get the second one planted before the sun set.  I ended up planting it on the other side of the tree, but closer to the woods.  This second tree wasn't protected on two sides like the first, but luckily I was able to drive the post in deep enough that I think it is pretty solid.  A ring of privet limbs and branches from the old oak tree all the way around it should help protect it too.

The instructions say that the trees like rocky dry slopes, so I think this area should be perfect.  I should be able to get water out of the cattle trough by the barn for most of the summer, so I won't have to haul water all the way from the house.  

I planted a third nut in my yard, by a catalpa stump left when that same 2019 storm blew down all those trees in my yard.  Right now, this one only has a small cage around it, about 1' tall.  It does have chicken wire inside though to protect it from the rabbits.  I plan to buy some more of the welded wire with the 1" x 2" openings and replace that short cage.

There are two or three nuts left in the bag and they're going to be planted tomorrow in the upper part of the Barber field.  Again, they'll just have small cages lined with chicken wire for now, but that should protect them from deer browsing until I can get some larger cages put in place.  

I'm so excited by the thought that I just might actually have some Ozark chinquapin trees growing soon.  I've already been out to check on all three of these nuts to see if any have started coming up!   Of course they haven't yet, but when they do, you can bet there will be pictures!  They're like my new little babies, and I'm their proud ol'  mama!